We have been asked to give our views on how money, private money in particular, could make people's lives better. An important and intriguing project!

Immediately, I imagine the various contributors to this book as a jostling throng of thinkers, writers and doers (in my case all three) thrown together in Club Class on a jet travelling at 35,000 feet, tasked with covering whole continents of social, economic and political considerations; with one eye on the clock.

Meanwhile, far below us, almost invisible under a canopy of clouds, are the people and communities that are the implicit subject of the various views and pronouncements here. These people are not going anywhere. Their perspective is utterly different from ours, trapped within a syndrome of poverty and powerlessness.

It is for this reason that I prefer to walk. Here, on the ground, the richness and the poverty of real people's lives shines in starker relief. Standing here, among the wreckage, it is obvious that while human lives elude simple nostrums, they can nevertheless elicit powerful truths that can arm us in figuring out how private money can help to make a difference.

Living in the wreckage

You could choose any one of millions of lives to reinforce this point. Over here is Shirley, who conducts her profession in the red light districts of South Birmingham:

Place any two lives like these together at random and you will find all kinds of echoes between them: poverty creates these quirks of solidarity.